


A Puzzle to Solve

by thedevilchicken



Category: Agatha Christie's Poirot (TV)
Genre: Friendship/Love, M/M, Puzzles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 05:48:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7255000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hastings and Poirot play a game. Frankly, Hastings should have known better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Puzzle to Solve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Plaid_Slytherin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Plaid_Slytherin/gifts).



"It's supposed to be a holiday, Captain Hastings!" Miss Lemon exclaims, on the other end of the telephone line from London. Hastings has to admit he quite agrees. 

The previous evening was the last of their little late-summer jaunt down to Devon, and they spent it in the hotel dining room with several officers of the local constabulary. The suspects were assembled at the dinner table and at the time it was all dashed exciting, Hastings thinks. Naturally, however, once Poirot had revealed the killer's motive with his usual panache and the blackguard had confessed it all, the police took him away and the shine wore off quickly. One murder is very much like the next when it comes down to it: tragic, messy, and a lot of legwork. And this time Hastings didn't even get to finish his dinner. 

"He could at least have had the decency to wait until after the fish course," Hastings mutters. "Dashed fine halibut, that. Shame to see it go to waste."

"Oh, Captain Hastings," Miss Lemon replies, exasperated. He'd swear he can practically hear the disapproving frown beneath her row of neat little hair thingummies, and he supposes he really ought to ask her what to call them since women's things are such a bafflement sometimes. Poirot replied in French when he asked him and Hastings is aware his own knowledge of the continental lingo lacks a certain _je ne sais quoi_. "Don't hurry back, at least. I'm sure you could find somewhere to stay the night along the way. And please do try not to involve M. Poirot in any more...shenanigans."

Hastings resists the urge to point out that _he_ certainly hasn't murdered anyone and that telling Hercule Poirot he should leave a suspicious death in the hands of the police is futile at the very best, and they ring off. The car's outside and they're packed and ready to go, another holiday-turned-case complete. All that's left is the return journey.

He has to admit, however, that Miss Lemon made an excellent point: there's really no reason for them to hurry home.

-

"Are you feeling quite well, mon ami?" Poirot enquires as they pootle through the countryside, side-by-side in Hastings' car. 

"Oh, well, yes, quite," Hastings replies, not his most articulate, with his eyes firmly set on the road ahead. He's a very poor liar, however, no hand at all at cards, and he's very much aware of it. "Why do you ask?" 

He knows what's behind Poirot's enquiry, of course: it's their speed, or the distinct lack thereof. His new Lagonda will run like the wind and he's very fond of saying so to anyone who'll listen, but there they are meandering down country lanes at a rather sedate, relaxed tempo. So very much so, indeed, that the breeze with the top down hasn't even begun to trouble Poirot's hat. 

Poirot's eyes narrow very close to imperceptibly, but Hastings notices as he usually does. He expects to be called out on his rather barefaced collusion with Miss Lemon but his friend glances up through the trees into the dappled early evening light instead. 

"The sun, I fear he is beginning to set," he says. "Perhaps we had best find a convenient location to break our journey for the night."

Hastings concurs a trifle too eagerly. He suspects he doesn't have to say that was his intention all along.

-

"I'm just saying, old chap, haven't you ever wondered how it is you stumble across so many dashed rum characters? They're everywhere you go!"

Poirot peers at him over their supper - fish and chips on a bench on the seafront at high tide, with an eagle-eyed seagull there for company who, frankly, seems to fancy his chances with their haddock. They're eating it straight from the newspaper with their fingers because they quite forgot the forks, to which Poirot bitterly objected for a start; he likes to think Hastings doesn't know that he enjoys them, but he cottoned on to that fact years ago. For all Poirot's bluster about English cuisine, there are some things keeping him this side of the channel, and it's not all purloined rubies and bumped-off lords. 

"But the mystery and the intrigue, they are human nature," Poirot says by way of explanation, then gobbles down another chip. "One cannot help but encounter them _partout_."

"So you're saying murder's in our nature?" Hastings says. "It's not in yours, surely." 

"Perhaps, should the circumstances require it." He sounds quite serious, but Hastings can see his eyes are twinkling. "Of course, should Hercule Poirot commit such a crime, it would be the _crime parfait_."

"Balderdash," Hastings replies with a grin, tearing a chunk from his fish as the seagull looks on quite intently. "You've always said there's no such thing." 

"Perhaps, _mon ami_ ," says Poirot, and he smiles an enigmatic smile. "Would you like to play a game with me?"

He agrees without asking what kind of game it is, more fool him. He should have remembered their last game of Monopoly and steered well clear.

-

They stay the night in a little bed and breakfast outside Bournemouth where there's only just three other guests and, so Hastings hopes, no time for murder. Their rooms adjoin and though perhaps it's not quite proper, they open up the door and share a nightcap at the table that's in Hastings' room, beneath the picture window overlooking the sea. 

Poirot rests his hand over Hastings' with a twinkle of amusement in his eyes. And then, the game begins. 

By the time Hastings makes it to his bed he's quite done in, thoughts turning around in his head like an motor on the blink. To say he's no detective's not an understatement. Poirot has presented the facts of the case in a most straightforward manner, but the solution quite escapes him. He'll sleep on it, he thinks, and he'll start again in the morning. 

Poirot looks quite disgusted by Hastings' breakfast - toast and marmalade, sausage, eggs, bacon, a pot of tea, quite the full English, excellent cookery all in all - and makes do with a dab of jam on toast himself. Hastings pours the tea and he asks him questions, and Poirot answers patiently. In the bright morning sun, Hastings packs their suitcases into the car and they take off again for London. They've had one quiet night away, at least. 

"You were supposed to keep his mind off work, Captain Hastings," Miss Lemon says, looking up from her typewriter while he's going through the facts. But, soon enough, she's in the game right with him. There's a new case waiting the next morning and when Inspector Japp comes by the flat, he's dragged in too. 

"Come on, by George, there's three of us and only one of him," Japp says, once Scotland Yard's case is closed, and their odd trio meets for supper. "We'll figure it out, you mark my words." 

Hastings and Miss Lemon share a look. Three days have passed already; they have their doubts. 

-

Three days become four. Four become six, and six become ten. They have no solution and so, as they suspect there's information left to wheedle, Hastings is dispatched to do the wheedling. 

They dine out on the twelfth night, Hastings and Poirot making up eleven and twelve at a countess's table. There's some notion of Poirot taking a case at her behest, which in practice includes the two of them, Poirot for his little grey cells and Hastings as his wheelman. He doesn't mind; in fact, he finds he quite enjoys it. It keeps him busy whenever he's not travelling abroad. He's planning a little Mediterranean cruise in a couple of months, as it happens, and thinks Poirot might like to join him on it.

After supper, they say their goodbyes and return in a cab to Whitehaven Mansions. They hang their scarves by the door and Poirot pours himself a crème de menthe, and Hastings eyes the glass suspiciously as he pours himself a brandy. He's never understood Poirot's predilection for that particular liqueur, but he suspects there's a great many things he doesn't quite understand about his Belgian friend. He doubts he ever will, though not for lack of trying. 

When their drinks are drained and conversation regarding the countess's case has run its course, it's perhaps the time he ought to leave. They stand; Hastings leads the way from the living room to the locked front door. And then, toying with his scarf, Hastings turns back to him and says, "I could stay, you know, if you'd like me to. I've no plans for the morning." 

For a moment, Poirot goes very still and very quiet. Then, he puts his hand on Hastings' arm. 

"Mon cher Hastings," he says, and smiles, and the ends of his neatly waxed moustache twitch very slightly upwards. "I would like this very much." 

In Poirot's room, later on, it occurs to Hastings that he might have forgotten his wheedling. He's a terrible detective so it's just as well he's not one.

-

"Well, I say," says Hastings. 

"I've never heard such blooming claptrap in my life," says Japp. 

Miss Lemon refrains from comment, which is quite likely for the best. Hastings thinks she might be the cleverest of the lot of them, or at least the most diplomatic.

And Poirot, for his part, just looks amused. 

After supper there in Poirot's flat - he cooked, much to Japp's dismay - the inspector and Miss Lemon make their disgruntled exit. Hastings helps to clear the table afterwards. 

"That game was fixed, you know," he says, and Poirot darts him a little sidelong glance. "You didn't exactly give us all the facts, now did you." 

"I gave to you all the facts which would be left for the police to discover, mon ami," Poirot explains, and they return to the sofa with their replenished cups of coffee. They sit, Hastings' legs crossed at the knee with his saucer resting idly on his thigh, Poirot's feet tucked close together with his saucer held up close by his chest. "It is truly the perfect crime, _n'est-ce pas_?"

"It's dashed unfair, that's what it is," Hastings mutters underneath his breath, and he takes a sip of coffee, but he can't feel too put out: Poirot fooled Japp, too, after all, and he's high up in the police. Japp's cases tend more toward the mundane than the exceptional, of course; sometimes Hastings wonders what Poirot would make of an inspector's job in London these days, and he can't see him taking much to that at all. He's grown accustomed to the fanfare. Hastings is happy to help.

The game was fixed, rather like crooked dice but ten or twenty times more subtle. He should have known that from the start, in that room by the sea outside Bournemouth. But when they stood there by the window with its view across the sea, Poirot's hands spread lightly over Hastings' half-bared chest and their two foreheads bent together, the whys and the wherefores of it hadn't seemed to matter very much. Poirot's quiet at times like that. At times like that, his little grey cells can take a well-deserved sabbatical. There are times when Hastings is the one who takes the driver's seat, after all.

Poirot holds his saucer in one hand and settles the other there at Hastings' knee; Hastings covers Poirot's hand with his and squeezes lightly. In a second, they're both smiling. Before they move again, their coffee's gone cold.

"You could stay the night, if you've no plans," Poirot says, as they clear away their cups.

"I'd actually planned to do just that," Hastings replies, already tugging at his bowtie, and Poirot clucks his tongue in fond critique. They retire to the bedroom. Hastings doesn't know how women must get on with their fiddly wardrobes but men's buckles and buttons and ties are surprisingly time-consuming. 

"Would you like to play a game?" Hastings asks.

"Bien sûr, mon ami," Poirot replies, and he turns out the light. 

Of course, Hastings' games aren't particularly intellectual; they're more or less the opposite, in fact. He's all cars and golf and countryside shooting, the physical man that Poirot's not. Playing Hastings' games, neither wins unless they both do.

Poirot's games are always rigged, Hastings thinks, as the light turns out and the bedroom turns dark. Poirot never gives him all the facts and perhaps that should be some kind of irritation to him. But, frankly, murder's not the puzzle that Hastings wants to solve. 

Poirot, of course, lives for puzzles: grand ones, confounding ones, ones that no one else could hope to solve. 

When they kiss in the dark with a tickle of moustaches, Hastings knows his dear friend is the only puzzle that he needs.


End file.
